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Prince: My deal was guaranteed

Former K-State football coach's account differs from that of former AD Weiser

FILE PHOTOS/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

Former Kansas State athletic director Tim Weiser, according to testimony from former Wildcat coach Ron Prince, first sketched out the details of a five-year, $5.5 million guaranteed contract on a napkin following the Wildcats' 73-31 loss at Nebraska in 2007.

FILE PHOTOS/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

Former Kansas State coach Ron Prince has testified in a deposition that he believed he had a guaranteed contract with the school, one initially sketched out during the administration of former athletic director Tim Weiser.

Before the Memorandum of Understanding, Ron Prince said, there was the napkin.

Prince, Kansas State's ex-football coach, testified that former athletic director Tim Weiser sketched a preliminary contract proposal on a napkin after the Wildcats' 73-31 loss at Nebraska in 2007.

That contract — and Prince's accompanying buyout agreement — would become the basis for the ongoing legal battle between the school and its former coach. Prince was fired in 2008, and the school has filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate his $3.2 million buyout deal.

In a deposition obtained by The Topeka Capital-Journal, Prince claimed Weiser's initial contract offer came with a full guarantee: If the coach were fired at any point, he would receive the remaining value of the $5.5 million deal.

Prince's testimony contradicts previous statements from Weiser and others at the university. Weiser has said he opposed increasing Prince's buyout; in fact, disagreement over the buyout contributed to Weiser's departure from the university in February 2008.

"I did tell coach Prince that we would not increase the buyout, but that I would consider giving him a raise and an extension on his contract," Weiser told The Capital-Journal in January 2009. "The increased buyout, however, was very important to him."

Sources at K-State corroborated Weiser's stance on the buyout. George Hanson, an attorney representing K-State, questioned Prince repeatedly about the buyout during the deposition.

"Just so I'm clear," Hanson said, "it's your testimony that after the Nebraska game on Nov. 10, 2007, Mr. Weiser was prepared to announce a new five-year contract for you with an annual guaranteed salary of $1.1 million, such that you would be entitled to the $5.5 million buyout if you were fired without cause; is that correct?"

"Correct," Prince answered.

The contract Prince ultimately signed in August 2008 contained a $1.2 million buyout, accompanied by a separate Memorandum of Understanding guaranteeing the remaining $3.2 million.

K-State has challenged the MOU in court, arguing it doesn't represent a valid contract. Prince, who was fired in November 2008, maintains he wouldn't have signed the new contract without the full guarantee.

"They were the same deal," Prince testified. "They were one deal. It was five years for 1.1 million (annually)."

Prince testified that K-State was in a "dire" situation after his first season, a 7-6 campaign that ended with a loss in the Texas Bowl. Lackluster recruiting had left K-State with holes in its roster, Prince said, and long-term security was important to weather the coming struggles.

"I knew there was going to be tremendous difficulty in the years ahead," Prince said, "and I expressed that to Tim and the administration. I was very concerned about how years two and three going into the future would be if we did not recruit well and do well because of the result of those two previous seasons before we arrived and the recruiting classes in those years."

Salary wasn't a sticking point — Prince said he was "sensitive" about making more than the $1.25 million his predecessor, Bill Snyder, earned — but Prince was adamant about the full guarantee.

"I wasn't interested in being an interim coach," Prince said.

Bob Krause, Weiser's replacement, devised the MOU as a way to fit Prince's contract demands into the budget. Under the deferred-compensation agreement, Prince's buyout payments would be delayed until 2015.

"Because of budget concerns that were presented to us, we agreed to take those dollars at a later date," Prince said.

Prince was fired Nov. 5, 2008, less than three months after he signed the contract and the MOU. He recalled being summoned to president Jon Wefald's home for a morning meeting, where Wefald made small talk about the previous night's presidential election.

"President Wefald went on about Obama's election and what that meant for the country and what an important day that was in our history," Prince said. "I was not interested in talking about that at that time."

Months later, after Prince had returned to Virginia, he received a frantic phone call from Krause.

"He told me the university was saying that the MOU wasn't valid and that a story was perhaps going to be written about it and that there would be hell to pay, bloodbath, whatever — those kind of strong terms," Prince said. "And it came as a shock to me."

Prince was equally shocked when Krause flew to Charlottesville, Va., and offered to purchase an insurance policy on his own life if Prince agreed to nullify the MOU.

"I had never heard of such a thing," Prince said. "I didn't know what he was getting at. I wasn't connecting the dots at all. It came so far out of left field."

Later, Prince said, he learned the details of K-State's lawsuit by reading the newspaper.

"I could not understand why the university took a position (that) I felt was to trash me in the public (realm)," Prince said. "I didn't understand why the university would take that position, because I didn't follow what any of this was about."